Four tips to help you break into product marketing

Hi, I’m James. Thanks for checking out Building Momentum: a newsletter to help startup founders and marketers accelerate SaaS growth through product marketing.

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After my post on four tips when hiring product marketers, I got quite a few messages about the last tip: hiring managers need to take bets on junior PMMs.

Unsurprisingly, most messages were exasperated.

They’ve identified that product marketing is a great match for their experience, skills, and interest – not to mention, it’s a HOT role.

But often their applications go ignored. There’s always more suitable candidates, and – as high-demand as product marketing is – many companies have been scared to hire juniors for lack of in-office training and mentorship.

So how should budding PMMs make their big break and get into product marketing?

P.S. Here’s my career journey into product marketing:

Revisit your resume and experience

PMMs entering the industry come from a variety of backgrounds already. I know product marketers who started their professional careers as marketing execs, sales development reps, content writers, customer support reps, customer success execs, product managers, technical writers… and many, many more.

And just think: each of these roles involves core elements of product marketing. But how well does your CV manage to showcase these?

• Researching and interpreting customer needs
• Organising and executing on cross-functional projects
• Communicating complex concepts in a simple, customer-friendly way
• Identifying the market landscape and evolving trends
• Building product knowledge and understanding how it solves customer problems

Detailing these foundational skills in your CV, regardless of the job role they were gained under, can help you stand out by speaking the language that hiring managers are looking for.

Build a portfolio

Go even further than just pad out your resume. Can you pull together a portfolio that showcases examples of all the key skills listed above?

This doesn’t have to be complex. Use Mural, Miro, or even Google Slides and create an interactive, engaging portfolio that showcases your skills, experience, and interests.

Use your portfolio to tell a cohesive story of how your skills helped companies achieve key goals.

Remember STAR:

• Situation – describe the problem that was faced
• Tasks – detail what were you asked to achieve
• Actions – showcase the work you did, the deliverables, and any alternatives you considered
• Results – finish on a high and shout loud about the impact you delivered

Less is more: don’t go overboard, and instead highlight the most relevant projects for the roles you’re applying.

It’s likely that you have lots of relevant experience under your belt already. For example, content that you’ve produced, the way you approached creating outbound email campaigns, or projects you worked on to improve the customer experience.

Identify companies with the right vibe

Getting a role as a new product marketer within the wrong business won’t just get you fired, but it’ll put you off the role for life.

As well as ensuring a good culture fit, you also need to consider the company’s approach to product marketing. Too focused on assumptions and internal-thinking means it’ll be harder to build strong foundations. Too corporate, and you might not get the scrappy experience that tests you under pressure.

For many first-time product marketers, I recommend finding companies where:

• A Senior PMM or Product Marketing Lead is hiring a PMM to train up
• A Director / Head of Product Marketing is hiring a PMM to work in an existing but small product marketing team
• A Head of Marketing with PMM experience is hiring a PMM to train up

Either of these will give you someone to work with and learn from, and give you exposure to the full breadth of product marketing.

Stay away from companies that use really corporate-language in their job descriptions. Ask about their on-the-job training and skill development programs. Look for ‘growth-mindset’ companies that are open to applicants even if they don’t meet 100% of the requirements.

Expand your network

Engaging in product marketing communities is not only going to give you more exposure to the ins-and-outs of product marketing, but gives you an opportunity to meet new folks and connect with future peers.

I can’t recommend the Product Marketing Alliance community on Slack strongly enough. It’s so great to see over 20k+ current and aspiring product marketers bonding and learning together.

Local PMA ambassadors also run some regular monthly meetups, where you can show up in-person or join Zoom chats. Participating in these is a great way of getting face time and absorbing the language and learnings of the community.

Bonus: Avoid doing free work

There have been some conversations across the PMM communities on LinkedIn and Twitter about whether product marketers should do free work by reviewing a company’s website or their industry and pulling together recommendations or new approaches, and sending to hiring managers in the hope of standing out.

As much as you can, avoid doing free work for companies that haven’t asked for it… and even then, protect your time and energy accordingly. The content marketing world has become very competitive with employers taking liberties. Let’s not let the product marketing world go the same way.

P.S.

Would you be interested in joining regular catchups for budding product marketers to learn from each other, exchange ideas, and talk to people who get you? Drop me a DM on LinkedIn, Twitter, or get in touch by email. I may be working on something to help you out!

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